radical remedy

[marley]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Ebony AKA AngieJ" <ebonyink at h...> wrote:
> The teens do not bother me.  This may be because I like kids and 
have 
> a lot of patience with them.  Unless we are going to have a credit 
> card check required for membership, I don't think it's fair for us 
to 
> restrict who gets in.  If we are going to have criteria for 
> membership from now on, fine, but the members who are already 
around 
> ought to be grandfathered in.

I'm personally against closing the group - I've only been a member 
for two months or so, that may be why...

But what really bugs me is the assumption that the teenagers around 
here are to blame.  I'm 16, but I wouldn't dream of using "Netspeak," 
mostly because it's stupid, I always spell- and grammar-check my 
posts first (and if I do realize, too late, that I've misspelled 
something, it bothers me for days), and I always think about whether 
what I'm posting is intelligent or will offend somebody.  There are 
some teenagers who don't do all that, but there are adults who don't 
either.  It's not solely a teenage problem.

> And yes, we get the badly spelled reviews and posts in annoying 
> Netspeak.  I think a gentle chiding is in order in these cases... 
not 
> shattering these teens' fragile egos.  I think it helps to remember 
> that we didn't always know everything ourselves.  :-D 
> 
> Lots of these teens are TRAINABLE.  I currently am a fandom big 
> sister or parent of sorts to about a dozen or more of these kids... 
> it's been very rewarding to say the least.  After a while, the "n e 
> wayz" and silliness ceases and they become more sophisticated in 
> their postings and thought.  Some of the young fanfic writers I've 
> been privileged to work with have improved vastly just from having 
> the chance to interact with "grown-ups" in the fandom.  A lot of 
> these kids come from decent homes, but some of them come from not-
so-
> good ones... why do you think they're online all the time?  
Patience 
> is always a virtue... I am not saying they ought to be allowed to 
run 
> rampant on the lists, but there is a way to teach them "our ways".
 

This is a good thought, but we don't need "training" - we aren't 
dogs.  Most teens are quite capable of thinking rationally without 
needing to be shown how to.  And most of the people you're talking 
about, who do use Netspeak and don't spell things correctly, are the 
younger teens, even 12-year-olds.  

Sorry if this seems mean, but lately, I've noticed a growing surge of 
anti-teen feeling, both online and off, and it's really annoying.  
Part of the reason I like the Internet so much is because I can be 
treated like a reasonable human being and not a degenerate plague of 
society - which is often the case in real life, though I don't do 
anything to foster that sort of attitude.

I'v generally found that there are two kinds of grownups in the 
world: The kind that remember what it was like to be a kid, and the 
kind that don't.  All the grownups I've encountered in the HP fandom 
are the former, and that's really cool, because a lot of the grownups 
I've encountered in real life are the latter.

So, adults out there, please - a little bit of understanding will go 
a long way.

nosilla aka Allison, really tired of being seen as a degenerate 
plague of society